The Waning Moon
by K.Henderson
Summary: -"Or from the crevice peered about old faces glimmer'd thro' the doors, old footsteps trod the upper floors, old voices called her from without." How long would you wait until the love of your unlife was born? How would Edward cope with eternity alone?


The move was irrelevant. There was no rhyme or reason for it then to simply move on from one place to another as I so wished. I had unceremoniously packed my belongings while my ex-boyfriend was at work taking me all but a half an hour as I had so very little of anything. Once all I owned-two card board boxes in the back seat with books and shoes, two suit cases in the trunk, a duffle bag and pictures- were loaded into the gray Chevy Impala I took to the road without a backwards glance at the small cottage styled home on Mesa Dr, my home for two years.

Like I mentioned before, the move was irrelevant, there was no reason for me to leave other that it was what I simply wished to do it. My boyfriend Kyle Kite was not a bad guy rather just a boring one. Standing at five foot ten, bronze colored hair and brilliant blue eyes that had once caught me in their fancy as his boyish charm, Kyle was a magnificent specimen of young adult. He was tanned richly from working with his hands in the hot Florida sun he laughed all the time and was never with any sort of anger.

I admit that I grew bored with him. We had nothing in common anymore and I had been sequestered by his kindness and his sweetness. His innocence had felt smothering because, let us face it for you must know already-I am not kind, sweet nor am I innocent personified. This was not the reason I left him, oh no not at all. If I had really hated the varying differences in our personalities then I would have left him long before moving in together. What do you take me for, a fool? No, the reason for my sudden disappearance from Kyle's life had nothing to do with us. It had to do with my wishes with my wants and what I wanted was to leave the hot odious swamp of Florida I wanted to go back to the beginning. I wanted to go home.

**The Waning Moon**

It was a large white house or rather gray as I had expected with time. It was still large and square and rather ordinary set against a dotting of trees perhaps for privacy. The most striking feature was the red slate roof the slanted at an alarming angle to meet the white stone walls and the multitude of windows with their graying paint. Twin brick chimneys peeked into the sky, two brilliant puffs of black smoke rising like black clouds. I hadn't been in this house in twelve years and as I eased the Chevy into the dirt driveway I caught the first glimmerings of a jagged Twilight set against the backdrop of the forest behind the house.

The car came to a stop and I quickly shut off the engine trying to let my rattled nerves fade into the crevices of my mind because I had no reason to be nervous. This was family this was my Nana's house this was home. I took a long deep breath, my eyes closed my brows furrowing in unsuppressed anxiety. I tried to will away this nervousness balling my hands into the material of my cotton t-shirt. It took me at least ten minutes to get out of that car.

The air was moist not unlike the Florida air but where the moistness of it started the similarities ended there it was infinitely cooler here, ice touching my lungs as I took a long awaited deep breath. An icy breeze picked up my hair sending the mass of thick black curls bouncing lightly and I was reminded of years ago when my parents had still been alive, living in this house. The evenings spent in the garden near the litany of windows to the west potion of the house, now overgrown with weeds. My mother laughing into my ear, my father's thick calloused brown fingers toying with my curls as Nana tended to the flowers.

The wind had slammed the Chevy door shut with a loud bang and I returned to reality and in the corner of my eye I caught the lace curtains in one of the windows move. I wondered, of course, if it was my uncle or maybe even Nana if I were lucky until I reminded myself, that Nana was gone too a shadow playing on the walls of this old house and small town, the light of a candle forever extinguished. Immediately I regretted the distance I had placed upon us, Nana and me. The funeral had been perhaps a year ago or two it was almost impossible to pinpoint the actual time of events, what was certain was that I did not go because I couldn't accept the thought of it.

The glistening of the red door came closer as I walked towards it and suddenly it opened the gaping wide mouth of this kind and solemn house and at in this mouth I saw the warm light of the fireplace dance along the crème colored walls, the pictures of my parents on the walls, in the doorway I saw a man. He was six feet two inches in height. The blue sweater tightly hugged his lean chest and black jeans hugged long legs. The peeking of skin at his collarbone shimmered like bleached bone like the skin of his arms, fingers and face. His nose was slightly narrow and long. He had high cheek bones accentuating his strong jaw and golden deep set eyes with light bruises just beneath. One bushy brow was hiked upward as he stared at me. His pale pink lips looked near scarlet against the white of his face.

In the past twelve years away from home Uncle Eddie hadn't changed one bit.

"Neither have you," He said. "You look just like your mother."

It brought a smile to my face to hear it since it had been so long. For two reasons really, I had always prided the fact that I looked like my mother and then there was the other reason the deep seated lingers of a little girl caught in first love. Uncle Eddie had been everything the Prince Charming of my dreams was always supposed to be. He had known, of course. He had known and he had supplied the tales to me every night once my parents were asleep.

_'Once upon a time-'_

His voice had been my lullaby.

"Welcome home."

-

-

-

The interior was just as it had always been in my childhood. The deep velvet red sofa, the oak coffee table and even the scent of mead being brewed by the fire-I hadn't necessarily known that it was mead at first, like I mentioned earlier I hadn't been to this house in a very long while-but I recognized its smell. When I was a girl this was something my mother had often done alongside my Nana, always brewing the mead over the open fire of the hearth while my father played on the grand piano and I sat on Uncle's cold lap humming to the music.

"It's been a long time." He began still stirring the contents of the small cauldron; he hadn't looked at me after I had followed him into the house. "Thirsty?"

"A bit." I answered, my mind was garbled and every appendage seemed heavy. From my seat on the velvet sofa I could see the grand piano set closest to the opening of the kitchen covered in a very light sheen of dust. "You haven't been playing, Uncle Eddie?"

"There is no music to play." He said in his deep soothing voice. "I think perhaps, the last song played on that piano was her lullaby two years ago-your grandmother was lying on that couch as I played." His eyes seemed to darken in agony. I was not surprised that he had not played after that.

A moment later a mug filled with cooling honey wine was placed into my hands. I blew at the steaming muggy liquid. I took a languid sip.

**WITH blackest moss the flower-pots**

**Were thickly crusted, one and all;**

**The rusted nails fell from the knots**

**That held the pear to the gable wall.**

**The broken sheds look'd sad and strange;**

**Unlifted was the clinking latch:**

**Weeded and worn the ancient thatch**

**Upon the lonely moated grange.**

Kyle had called, Uncle Eddie had said. Kyle had called the house sounding most upset-he'd said to Uncle Eddie (whom Kyle was under the impression was my cousin) that "she just picks up on a Monday and leaves how could she just leave?"

My heart was full of guilt but not the sorrow that Uncle Eddie told me I should have felt if I had truly been in love with Kyle. It assured me greatly that I had done the right thing, taking my whim as more then a whim as perhaps destiny. This way Kyle could find someone more deserving and flighty and kind filled with sweetness, kindness and the patience worthy of a saint because with Kyle you had to be patient. Uncle Eddie said it was just fine this way-he said that humans seemed to change their minds often that Kyle would find love with someone else. It made me happy and as the time passed us and the seasons blended together into one great wave the guilt lessened and Kyle Kite, my high school sweetheart, became another shadow playing on the wall like my parents, my grandmother and my childhood.

"Aren't you lonely?" I asked him one day as he tended the overgrown garden attempting to revive it like the times of old. He looked almost monstrous amongst the wild green and moldering of brown dead leaves as he crouched closely to the earth as though listening to its bitter song-_she would not take him into herself she would not allow him to return to the beginning her sweet bitter him of the death she would never allow for him to have that had taken his love._

"I have you," He said simply. "and that is all I need for now."

**She only said, 'My life is dreary,**

**He cometh not,' she said;**

**She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,**

**I would that I were dead!'**

A year passed and I was twenty, an age of adulthood leaving behind childish things of course this was an age that Uncle Eddie would never be just like my previous 19 and before that 18. The garden spilled beautifully in varying colors of mostly blue and violet and in the distance near the apex of the forest I saw Uncle Eddie staring into the trees. He celebrated out loud and mourned internally-his thoughts were as mine. What would happen when I died in this house so far off from town? What would happen when I grew more years? What would happen when my pink skin grew gray and wrinkled with my impending age while he remained the same? This house would stand. He would also stay and the earth will take me into her and sing her bitter song.

"I'm not weary of it." He said. "I'm envious of it. I want it for myself."

My legs had moved to their own accord across the green grass and wild flowers I walked towards him as though pulled by an invisible string until I was not a foot behind him an outstretched hand, my palm against his cold stone back as I nearly began to weep recalling the words of my mother.

_'Uncle Eddie used to smile sadly on my birthdays. I never understood it until I turned twenty when he left this house for one week. I understood that he was sad, he was crying in his own way.'_ Her heart shaped face was not trained on me but to the sky, her warm brown eyes were soft and her wide pink lips were lifted in a small secretive smile. My mother had loved Uncle Eddie too.

_'Uncle Eddie was crying?'_

_'In his own way sweetheart.'_ She caressed my face with her small soft hands filled with love overflowing not just for me, not just for my father but for Nana and Uncle Eddie as well-when she died I imagined that she carried the love for all of us with her just as strongly as she had always felt it even before the cancer had mangled her fair beauty when I was seven. When father took me from the house that I called home in his grief as I watched the back window from the truck as Nana and Uncle Eddie became smaller and farther away I imagined mother was with them too.

"What if I'm weary?" I asked him. "What if I don't want this what if I don't want to age Uncle Eddie?"

_'What if I want to stay just like this and be with you forever in this house?'_ The unasked question reverberated in my mind.

He merely touched my cheek with a gentleness he had only ever used for one woman and I leaned into his hand in my weariness in his abominable strength to hold me and to make me strong.

"Age, have children, grow old and die-for me." His other hand joined at my other cheek as he stared down into my eyes, his fingers now dancing in my black curls. He smiled crookedly at me. "Do what I cannot."

I wondered if he ever said this to my mother.

**Her tears fell with the dews at even;**

**Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;**

**She could not look on the sweet heaven,**

**Either at morn or eventide.**

I had a son the following year, a bouncing baby boy I called Augustus. His father was not a man that I would ever speak of out loud for the shame of who he was and what we had done. I was not like my mother I had no moral when it came to the vows of others. Augustus' father was a married man and would never ever be mine and I thought that maybe I had shamed my parents.

"Auggie looks just like you, just like your mother too." Uncle Eddie said in passing once as he bounced little Augustus in his arms the way I imagined he would have to his own son if he could have had any. "Black curls brown eyes he looks nothing like his father." It was the first and only time he mentioned Augustus father.

"Will you play a melody for him, some day?" I asked.

Uncle Eddie stared longingly at the piano and never answered.

The silent _maybe_ hung in the air however, as his little Auggie gurgled lovingly up at him I witnessed an immortal monster try, as he might, to cry.

**After the flitting of bats,**

**When thickest dark did trance the sky,**

**She drew her casement-curtain by,**

**And glanced athwart the glooming flats.**

**She only said, 'The night is dreary,**

**He cometh not,' she said;**

**She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,**

**I would that I were dead!'**

**When thickest dark did trance the sky,**

**She drew her casement-curtain by,**

**And glanced athwart the glooming flats.**

**She only said, 'The night is dreary,**

**He cometh not,' she said;**

**She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,**

**I would that I were dead!'**

The years passed as seasons changed. Flowers bloomed to die as I watched my son grow into a handsome young man utterly in love with life, this house and with us. It was the three of us, of course, as I had never found love in someone I felt, I was doomed to my weariness and my guilt of leaving _him_ alone. The years, as sad as they were, were also filled with joy. There were no tears in this happy household of ours, the mother, the son and the immortal child of old-it was as it had been when I was a child. I understood perfectly now, everything that had been when I was born. My mother's silence became clear and even my father's grief as he followed her to death not a year after her passing-there was love in this house.

"Julliard?" Edward asked over the brew, the hearth lighting his bone white features. His eyes were trained on Augustus, proud gold glimmering in fire light.

"Yeah," Augustus smiled broadly, his long black curls pinned back in a ponytail at the nape of his neck. His russet skin just a bit darker at his cheeks, he was blushing. "New York is pretty far away." His brown eyes trained towards me I had the privilege of seeing the child of him still inside. I felt Uncle's ancient grief at the realization of Augustus age the passing years to come and a new understanding camaraderie grew between us.

The house became empty with just the two of us, the piano untouched still after all this time the bitter mead coated on my tongue. The warmth of the hearth played upon my face as I waited to become a fading shadow on the wall.

**All day within the dreamy house,**

**The doors upon their hinges creak'd;**

**The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse**

**Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd,**

**Or from the crevice peered about.**

**Old faces glimmer'd thro' the doors,**

**Old footsteps trod the upper floors,**

**Old voices called her from without.**

**She only said, 'My life is dreary,**

**He cometh not,' she said;**

**She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,**

**I would that I were dead!'**

Augustus and his pretty wife Madeline had never been a more beautiful pair not since my parents or my grandparents at least and Edward mostly agreed. A part of him still seemed to reject the notion that Augustus was a man that I was an old woman and that time was soon beginning to takes it toll on our happy life.

Augustus' daughter gave him hope that he may not be alone forever, such a beautiful child with her thick black curls and bright brown eyes, her small button nose and rosebud pink lips and her birds' voice. Songs in Madeline's native French filled the summer days accompanied sometimes by Augustus saxophone. Madeline would dance, the beautiful ballerina her daughter so wanted to be. It was a perfect vision nothing that I would have ever imagined for myself.

I was in my mother's shoes in my Nana's shoes watching the beauty of warm life.

The years passed, laughter and love eased the passage of time.

I was 52 when I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

The happy times had begun to fade.

**Upon the middle of the night,**

**Waking she heard the night-fowl crow;**

**The cock sung out an hour ere light;**

**From the dark fen the oxen's low**

**Came to her: without hope of change,**

**In sleep she seemed to walk forlorn,**

**Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn**

**About the lonely moated grange.**

**She only said, 'The day is dreary,**

**He cometh not,' she said;**

**She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,**

**I would that I were dead!'**

**About a stone-cast from the wall**

**A sluice with blacken'd waters slept,**

**And o'er it many, round and small,**

**The cluster'd marish-mosses crept.**

**Hard by a poplar shook alway,**

**All silver-green with gnarlèd bark:**

**For leagues no other tree did mark**

**The level waste, the rounding gray.**

**She only said, 'My life is dreary,**

**He cometh not,' she said;**

**She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,**

**I would that I were dead!'**

**And ever when the moon was low,**

**And the shrill winds were up and away,**

**In the white curtain, to and fro,**

**She saw the gusty shadows sway.**

**But when the moon was very low,**

**And wild winds bound within their cell,**

**the shadow of the poplar fell**

**Upon her bed, across her brow.**

**She only said, 'The night is dreary,**

**He cometh not,' she said;**

**She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,**

**I would that I were dead!'**

It was snowing tiny flakes of unique shapes and sizes fell from the shrouded sky towards the earth. Looking back on all the passing years there was no guilt or sadness in it only envy and love. The hearth warmed the limbs that needed no warmth at all, the clock in the corner ticked loudly indicating the hour of twilight had descended upon the sleeping town of Forks.

A large white house, graying with age, stood large and square and rather ordinary set against a dotting of trees perhaps for privacy. The most striking feature was the red slate roof the slanted at an alarming angle to meet the white stone walls and the multitude of windows with their graying paint. Twin brick chimneys peeked into the sky, two brilliant puffs of black smoke rising like train smog.

A girl with long black curls walked towards the faded red oak door, her long legs covered in thick cotton pants, her feet in comfortable unbecoming loafers. The scarf around her shoulders hung past her small breasts covered in a warm winter coat. She took a moment, nervously deliberating in her choice; should she or shouldn't she?

She rapped on the door, the red faded mouth of the large loving home with its overgrown garden chocked by weeds and dead flowers, not the garden that she remembered when she was a girl-no this was a dead garden, an opened festering wound.

The mouth of this house opened. She could see the pictures of her great grandparents smiling on the wall, her father as a small child, her grandmother holding him in her arms. The near legendary Nana smiling in her youth, staring out almost alive from the glossy photograph but there was no one to greet her at the door.

She stepped inside recognizing the red carpet beneath her feet, the small table in the narrow hall still held the ancient vase with molted flowers that needed to be changed-she noted. She stepped into the front room immediately drawn to the large grand piano that had never been used in her time, the hearth's fire warming her freezing limbs. Her attention turned towards the familiar figure of a young man at the hearth stirring something in a large iron pot that smelled very familiar like the summers of her childhood. He poured the mead into a black mug and held it out to her, his glistening familiar golden eyes twinkling with light; his face whiter then she had ever remembered his marble beauty almost painful.

"It's been a while, Uncle Eddie." She said. "Dad wishes he could have come to see you but, you know he's always busy with his music." She took to mug and blew the steaming liquid before taking a long sip. "Maman sends her love; she wishes she could have been here to."

He smiled crookedly and gave a short small laugh.

"It's alright, Bella." The way he said her name made her flush, it was as though he didn't see her immediately. He was looking at her the way he looked at her grandmother but she paid it no heed.

The days passed soon melding into one, the winter break passing in a sea of white and finally, after so long Edward began to play the Lullaby.

"Is it grandma's song?" Bella asked, her pointed shoes making nary a sound on the gleaming wood, her arms delicately moving upward as she twirled. "Is it grandma Bella's song?"

"It's Bella's song," he said his fingers expertly playing the keys of the ancient instrument. "It is your song too." His eyes opened as he watched his little dancer. "It was Nana's song."

And the process of loving Bella would repeat until he had found her again, as this waif of a ballerina danced before him, long black curls falling about her like a cloud of smoke. He would wait forever, would watch her children's children waiting for her to finally emerge from the other side, alive again. He would know it, she had said, he would know when she had come back.

He would sense it, her scent would carry to him and he would know but, until then he must never wait in wanting he should never suffer: "Find happiness with mine until I come back to you, Edward. I will come back to you."

The previous Bella, the mother of Auggie had assured him that Bella would return-he would wait, of course he would wait for her and know her children and be happy.

"Nana was the first Bella."

"Yes," His fingers dance upon the keys staring at this child that looked like her father, like her grandmother, like her great grandfather Jacob Black. Another shadow cast upon the wall, Edward as its witness as he waited basking in love. "A beautiful Swan when I met her," He began his tale. "she was seventeen-"

How many seasons had passed, how many snows had come and gone, and flowers bloomed to die beneath the summer sun, while Edward and his Bella would wait, locked helplessly in time...wait for that one moment when their souls could come together once again in an ecstasy of earthly love?

**The sparrow's chirrup on the roof,**

**The slow clock ticking, and the sound,**

**Which to the wooing wind aloof**

**The poplar made, did all confound**

**Her sense; but most she loathed the hour**

**When the thick-moted sunbeam lay**

**Athwart the chambers, and the day**

**Was sloping toward his western bower.**

**Then said she, 'I am very dreary,**

**He will not come,' she said;**

**She wept, 'I am aweary, aweary,**

**O God, that I were dead!'**

Perhaps the question may _never _be answered.

* * *

-

_**Inspired by Tennyson, Mariana, reincarnation and Richard De' Mornay.**_

_**Review.**_

_**Don't Flame.**_


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